


River Child

by Merfilly



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Community: spook_me, F/M, Spook Me Multi-Fandom Halloween Ficathon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-26
Updated: 2013-10-26
Packaged: 2017-12-30 12:23:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1018563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merfilly/pseuds/Merfilly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A case in Russia leads Natasha to confront fairy tales</p>
            </blockquote>





	River Child

Being in Russia never set well with Natasha (not Natalia, she was dead now) but at least Clint was with her. A few more days, it would all be over, and they'd be on their way home.

Just a few more days.

"Tasha?"

Clint's tone said she was giving the world a death glare again. That made her school her emotions away, turning to look at him with an upraised eyebrow.

"Another drowning."

"Male, young, unattached, found down under the bridge?"

"Same."

Old, old stories trickled in the back of her mind, trying to unbury themselves from years of conditioning and false lives.

She did not have time for fairy tales.

"I'll go check the sensor feed," Clint told her when she remained in place.

"Do that. I'm going to the records bureau." She slid up fluidly, mentally checking each of her weapons hidden in the uniform. Clint took his collapsible bow, touched the arrows in his quiver, and left her to whatever clue she had found.

Fairy tales.

* * *

Sorting files into patterns came to her easily enough, though it was never her favorite part of the job. This case had drawn them in because of the town's rise as a resort and spa, drawing some influential members connected to the government, one of whom had been the second victim. Favors owed had been called in, and SHIELD was asked to lend assistance, under the radar.

It was a waste of their talent, but it was what it was.

Now, working back through birth and death records, Natasha was convinced Clint wasn't investigating the fourth drowning in the history of that stream and bridge.

Four generations, following the bloodlines of one family, had suffered deaths. Something near the water was stalking its victims through the years. Now, though, the killing was more intensive, picking up in number, and being less choosy. There was only one solid explanation coming to mind for Natasha.

Fairy tales were easier to believe when you'd fought beside a god. That didn't make them pleasant.

* * *

Something in the way the air felt around her made Natasha pull her gun and slowly open the door to the room where she and Clint had been staying. It felt… damp? As that processed from gut feeling to identified threat, she pushed the door firmly in.

Clint didn't move, his body just as relaxed in the bed as she would have been. A scan of the room gave her nothing, but as she stepped in, the feel of the carpet beneath her boots felt different, and she stepped back to see why.

Two wet footprints, as if someone wet had stood right there, looking in on her partner. Fear and anger warred in her heart, but it was anger that won.

Damned fairy tales.

"Stop snoring," she told her partner, giving the all clear that it was only her, and still in her right frame of mind.

"Then don't hog the covers tonight," he answered, his voice already sliding back towards sleep… and without mentioning the visitor.

She wondered if fairy tales would bleed.

* * *

She did not mention the incident to him when they both got up and began their morning routine. 

"Sensors?" she prompted from the middle of a backbend stretch.

He kept working the stress balls in his hands as he rolled through his upper body stretches. "Fritzed."

"That is the most technical briefing you've given yet," she told him in a sarcastic tone. He ignored it, save a twitch up of his lips at one corner.

"Your mystery trail?" he countered.

"Productive."

"Share?"

"Not yet."

Clint let it go. They knew enough from tone and body language to understand more in those few words than most SHIELD agents ever managed with their teammates.

They finished limbering up, ate, and headed back to the scene of the drowning. Natasha knew they would not find anything… fairy tales didn't leave evidence by day. Still, she kept her eyes out, ears open, and almost hoped for a sign she had been wrong.

Maybe because she wanted to be wrong, she noted the very faint signs of higher passage along one bank of the stream, near the supports of the bridge. She let her eye track the faint thinning of the grass, the way they did not spring as fully toward the sun… and the way there were signs that the strip was overly watered.

She really hoped fairy tales hurt when she shot them.

* * *

Danger for oneself was easily faced. Knowingly putting another in that position? Neither set well nor was Natasha's first choice. Even a teammate.

She could not actually warn him, give him all the details, for the fear it would make him less susceptible. 

"You take watch down there; I will follow my lead," Natasha told the man she called partner… and not lightly.

He favored her with a long, serious look. She knew what he was thinking. He needed to stay closer to her, guard her from the Red House's splinter groups, that maybe they'd already reached a hidden piece of programming that SHIELD's consultant in New England had missed. He looked for all those signs, then nodded once as he only read commitment to the mission.

"Radio set for vibrate."

"So is mine; I will be able to respond swiftly if you need me," she said, while promising herself to tear the fairy tale into shreds if he came to harm because she was too slow.

He suited up as she did, and they parted ways.

* * *

The Hawk's Eye was Clint's trick, going high, so he could see all. Natasha had not dared follow too closely, as she would either spook the fairy tales, or he would see her. She waited, taking a circular route, delayed to investigate potential escape paths… all to give time to the fairy tales to try and steal the man she worked with by choice.

Earplugs in, polarized lenses on… she would test science against magic, and think of Stark and Thor later. Up above the meadow near the bridge, waiting at the hedgerow only long enough to visually inspect… and then the Black Widow was in motion.

Three women, thin and gaunt, ethereal even with the polarized lenses attempting to block the pale luminescence from them, were in the meadows. Their clothes, so sheer in their wet state, hung around long limbs, framed by longer hair that dripped even now with stream water. 

Between them was Clint, listening to their voices coaxing him toward the stream, his eyes glazed over and unseeing of the danger. Natasha's once over of the meadow revealed the bow, dropped carelessly near the tree Clint would have used.

"Barton!" she barked, even as her twin pistols came up to cover two of the three women.

As suspected, he could not hear her… but they did.

_You are one of us._

_Child stolen from the cradle of our waters._

_Do not leave us. Come to us, and your kiss of death will reach as far as the rivers._

The words were in her mind, images of a sad and tragic woman carrying a baby to the river, leaving the baby at the edge, in cold winter waters. Rising from the currents further out, there was a woman, hair and clothes dripping, coming… but the trees rustled, and Natasha saw a man, one that defied all attempts to subdue her Russian memories into the past. 

Ivan.

Her parents were dead, two of them. Not an unwed woman giving up her baby to escape shame and ostracism… not… it just wasn't possible! No more lies about who she was could exist in her mind!"

 _Sister,_ they called to her, evoking the peace of soaking in a tub, her love of long showers, of walking in the cold rain. _Ours._

Natasha's eyes flared wide a the possessive trying to claim her, trying to keep her from protecting…

"No. He's mine," she snapped, focusing fully on Clint. Clint who had declined to kill his objective. Clint that had introduced her to a way out. Clint whom she owed, and could never pay back. Clint… who claimed none of that debt, and just gave to her in the same way as she did to him.

Fairy tales did not bleed.

But they did hurt, and they would retreat.

* * *

"You're awake."

"I have a headache."

"You ought to; I knocked you out with the butt of my pistol."

"Do I say thank you, or do I get pissed?"

"How fond of drowning are you?"

"Thank you."

They looked at each other a long moment, before he shifted to sit up in the bed. "You also used me as bait without telling me. Why?"

"Would have changed the mission parameters to a potential failure if you had known the truth. Schrodinger's Cat." Natasha sat down on the edge of the bed.

"And we could not use a local for bait?" he asked, not best pleased with her. She met his eyes, held them for a long moment before replying.

"If it was you, I _would not_ fail. No matter what they did."

His answer was to relax, and to slide his hand toward hers, not quite touching, but there. "So… what did I miss while I played bait and lost track of time?"

"Undead spirits of suicidal women. The local priest is now aware of rituals to perform to send them out of this plane," she answered him.

That they had accused her of being a bastard child, meant to die in the river, she did not say. But she would never walk in the rain so freely again.

"We're done?"

"We go home," she answered that.

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> A hat tip to C.J. Cherryh for bringing the Rusalka to my attention as a myth.
> 
> My monster was 'BoogeyMan'
> 
> Both image prompts were used, found [here](http://s879.photobucket.com/user/spook_me/media/Spook_Me%20Tarot%20Cards/the-shadow-side_zps9cbc7ea5.jpg.html) and [here](http://s879.photobucket.com/user/spook_me/media/Spook_Me%20Tarot%20Cards/810921251_zps6dbd4f4b.jpg.html)


End file.
